This boat returning to the elements, spotted one September in the Provincetown dunes, reminds me of the nearest I have come to many things—the things, that is, I'll never do except in words and dreams and brief, yearning visits.
I did dream the other night that I was going to learn to row (wondering what word-play was working/playing in my subconscious). But now I realize that the nearest I will ever come is looking over the shoulder of Billy Collins in his poem about rowing upstream in a wooden boat...or looking at the Susquehanna in a painting. Life thrice removed.
Fishing On The Susquehanna In July
I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.
Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—
of fishing on the Susquehanna.
I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one—
a painting of a woman on the wall,
a bowl of tangerines on the table—
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,
rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.
But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,
when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandana
sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.
Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,
even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.—Billy Collins
image: Christie B. Cochrell, Red Boat, Cape Cod
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